By The Editorial Board, Updated December 18, 2025
Massachusetts municipal governments are facing a “perfect storm” that makes balancing budgets challenging, according to two reports recently published by the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Costs are rising, state aid to local governments (excluding schools) hasn’t kept pace with inflation, and towns are constrained in how much they can raise revenue locally, the reports found.
Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, told the editorial board that taxpayers in Gateway Cities and rural communities often can’t afford to approve property tax overrides. Communities in Central and Western Massachusetts have few opportunities to grow their way out of their fiscal woes.
The association is asking the Legislature to change how it calculates Unrestricted General Government Aid — state money given to municipal governments to use however they want — by tying it to a percentage of local tax collections. The association is also asking for an additional $351 million in aid next year, a hefty 26.5 percent increase over the $1.32 billion provided in fiscal 2026….
MassBudget Reference:
Phineas Baxandall, director of research and policy analysis at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, concluded in a recent report that while the amount of aid communities get is somewhat correlated to a town’s property values and median income, “the connection between economic need and local aid is loose and inconsistent.”
That can lead to discrepancies that seem irrational or unfair. For example, according to data Baxandall gave the editorial board, Boston gets $358 in unrestricted aid per resident, while Mattapoisett, with similar property values and income, gets only $75. There are major differences between those two communities, but consider Quincy and Weymouth, neighboring South Shore cities with similar median incomes and property values. Quincy gets $231 per capita in unrestricted aid while Weymouth gets only $187. The neighboring cities of Fall River and New Bedford are economically similar, yet New Bedford gets $281 per capita and Fall River gets $313.
